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blaqueswanzaghouliishiilikeda · 1 year

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bare with me bc im fatigued but unable to sleep so i’m just here thinking and need to get my thoughts out, but i think much of louis’ passivity stems from his relationship with his mother and family. we don’t really see him become passive until claudia arrives. please correct me if i’m wrong but i believe that side of him is awakened once that traditional family structure is solidified in his home and i think the du lac family has a lot to do with why he’s like that and not just that he’s incapable of acting or choosing.

i see him and i see the child/mother that doesn’t want to repeat his mother’s failings on his own family but takes it so far to the extreme that it means he refuses to confront anything ever bc he feels he’s communicating the unconditional love he never received. he really is someone who wants the ones in his life to know they can be loved through anything. whether or not people receive it in the way he gives it i don’t think should be put on his shoulders as much it is.

he doesn’t have healthy understanding of discipline/consequences bc he was punished for things he couldn’t help like his queer identity. it doesn’t really seem like growing up he got into much trouble, again correct me if im wrong. other than paul his pimping isn’t really admonished by the du lacs bc it affords them their lifestyle. they are willing to distance themselves from it bc they get the house and the staff and the honeymoon trips etc. but they won’t overlook who he is. and it outweighs anything else. and that’s a weird thing to process being punished for bc the only thing you can do is deny yourself. but they know. so you hiding it and they know and they show you they disapprove even if you’re trying to play by their rules. it creates a complex.

then there’s paul. he’s the only one who really took it on to take care of paul and establish a relationship with him. i think florence probably didn’t push back against his institutionalization and grace seems to agree he belonged there. louis was the only one who saw how it negatively impacted paul. he loved paul that was his favorite person and then he killed himself and florence blames him for simply being there. this is where he starts to go from the favored son to the scapegoat which is a fucked transition to experience and i think its super underestimated how badly louis is impacted by it. it also happens when he starts to openly entertain lestat so it’ll never matter that his last moments with paul were expressions of love bc his all florence sees is that he’s been acting in sin and so of course he must of done and said something to kill her baby who he was raising and caring for in her place btw. when paul was upset he went to louis not florence. the last thing he ever said to paul was he loved him and he still died and florence blames him for it. he’s always punished for loving as far as he’s concerned.

then he does make “a choice” to become an immortal monster/companion/wife, which given all the circumstances is very much not much of a choice on his part, but he decides to go with what he wants and that choice is at the center of the unraveling of almost all the things he cares about and links to his human identity. and he clings to his human identity so i believe that fucks with his ability to trust his own decision making for sure. it’s the loss of his role in his family slowly but surely and everything he did he did for them. he always struggles with his decisions about how he supports his family and how he copes w the impact it has on his community. so if in choosing his own desire to love and be loved for once strips him of his family and his community what does that say about the decisions he made along the way? what was it all for? and then on top of that he didn’t even know what he was choosing in choosing immortality with lestat. he’s rocked by being faced with the reality of his choice so much so that he forgot his brother died for a moment. he’s probably developed an inability to take a step in any direction bc every step leads to a new rock bottom and he doesn’t trust himself anymore. that’s a very real thing that happens.

so how does that manifest when he has his own lil nuclear family?? well

with claudia he doesn’t ever want her to feel like she could ever lose his love for her for any reasons. like his family showed him. so bc his own punishments were correlated with who he was and not things he did really i don’t think he’s able to see disciplining claudia as guiding her towards better actions i think he sees it as punishing her for being as she is which he blames himself for and also for loving (where charlie is concerned but i’ll get to that…). it was his choice to bring her into this life so how can he trust himself beyond loving her unconditionally. that’s what he wants so that’s what he gives. claudia does what she does bc she’s a vampire and she didn’t choose that. he did. so he retreats when the consequences of that crop up and becomes passive. he doesn’t want to take a step in any direction on top of the patriarchal structure that the father is the law of the house, but then charlie happens.

claudia didnt kill charlie out of maliciousness. it was young love with all the demanding of the insatiable hunger of a vampire. even lestat recognizes that she got carried away so to louis punishing her or even makeing her feel bad for the action was too deeply entwined with punishing her for loving at all and that is a sensitive thing for him. he doesn’t handle it better than lestat that’s not what i’m saying what i’m saying is he doesn’t have the tools to guide her through this. what he has is the desperation to not repeat what harmed him growing up. it’s after this that he decides lestat cannot be the law of the household where claudia is concerned until he realizes his approach seriously blinded him to the fact that claudia ,yes is a doomed child vampire, but she’s a doomed child vampire making decisions and her actions have serious consequences for all of them and he doesn’t have the tools to guide. he can love her through anything, but how can he of all people really guide her. this isn’t as simple as no running in the house and listen to your elders. the mother is learning her daughter is her own person (and vampire) not an extension of her and with character traits like her father too. (plus the mother has to realize that she can’t heal herself through her daughter) whew. so louis decides to step back and to let lestat be the law again and then claudia LEAVES and on her way out she challenges his decision to turn her at all (with good reason. these two vampires should not be raising a baby!!) louis is literally so distraught he wants her to come home but he can’t bring himself to go after her and bring her home. he doesn’t want to take a step!! he doesn’t want to decide. it never leads to what he thinks it will. i don’t think he believes he can trust himself to make good choices. so he loves her unconditionally on broadcast for every vampire within radio earshot to hear because that’s what he can do. thennnn she’s harmed while she’s gone and i’m sure he’s feels in a way responsible. he wanted to be her protector so badly (when actually she’s his but i’ll get to that in a bit) and wasn’t able to. and of course there’s that scene™️ in ep5 with being put in a position where he was pressured to choose between lestat and claudia and because it LOOKED like he MIGHT choose claudia and because he didn’t IMMEDIATELY choose lestat disaster ensued. that’s a lot. fuck.

and when the nature of his relationship with claudia shifts more to siblings because she’s getting older, wants more agency and claudia realizes she is also a replacement for grace, this is where the passiveness that is the result of his relationship with grace developed. bc while its true claudia takes over for grace, she is the sister to louis that grace never ever was. on top of the fact that her solution for their issues was “you’re dead to me,” grace never actually accepted and supported his queer identity truly like claudia and she definitely never protected him like claudia either (defending mama du lac in regards to paul comes to mind and also her husband being the replacement son). and louis needs and wants both those things as well as someone who won’t abandon him like grace did and he let’s claudia be them but takes it to the extreme where the last two are concerned. Louis doesn’t think he can save himself from his situation and claudia believes she can save herself and him. she isn’t gonna leave him behind. he leans into that heavily. it’s not just that he can’t and won’t make choices to get them out of their situation it’s also that he’s traumatized by his past choices and also he’s also loving lestat unconditionally as well on top of that (in the way he’s able to). i don’t think louis could see a way out like at all. he was shrouded in darkness. the best he could do was compartmentalize his love for lestat to protect himself when things were at their worst that was his flashlight in that darkness. but like when it was necessary for the success of the plan that he allow himself to love lestat fully he said if i feel it there’s no way out of this fr fr. he knew he wouldn’t make good choices. choosing lestat is the decision he will always make for better or worse. but that’s at the expense of claudia on top of choking her.

like idk we joke about his inability to make decisions but that trait in him is drenched with trauma. and his family is a huge part of why imo. i just get so upset when i think about them. i really rambled on and on here. not sure how much sense this makes but i guess this ties into my feelings about this as well. but yeah not choosing as a trauma response and not just as a way to get out of confronting his problems even tho that is a symptom. if that makes sense. idk. my brain is mash potatoes right now.

#iwtv #louis de pointe du lac #ldpdl #the de pointe du lacs said he can go to hell #and he went and started a family there with his rich french white husband #who’s doing it like him #claudia #if i keep opening doors that lead be to a new level of hell im not prepared for i’d develop a fear of opening doors #thats the tldr of this long ass post i guess #i planned to mention that a lot of claudia’s kills are attempts to create a companion as well #in regards to punishing her for loving or in this case wanting love and seeking it out #the placement of the claudia tag is driving me crazy bc it reads like a response to the question before it #but actually just had the thought that i should tag her name bc it’s pretty relevant to all this #re: paul’s death - and he probably already blamed himself for not noticing #for going up there #for not stopping him #etc. all these decisions!!#we want him to make better decisions or any decision but like he doesn’t have the tools. he wasn’t prepared for what motherhood really was #no matter how much he wanted to be one

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philtatoshetairos · 2 years

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Of wine-flush and indigo flowers

Shortly after reaching the colony, I fell fatally in love with Louis, a young dark-haired bourgeois planter, graceful of speech and fastidious of manner, who seemed in his cynicism and self-destructiveness the very twin of Nicolas.

He had Nicki's grim intensity, his rebelliousness, his tortured capacity to believe and not to believe, and finally to despair.

Yet Louis gained a hold over me far more powerful than Nicolas had ever had.

(...)

And I wonder sometimes if I didn't look to Louis to punish me for what had happened to Nicki, if I didn't create Louis to be my conscience and to mete out year in and year out the penance I felt I deserved.

But I loved him, plain and simple.

To anyone paying attention, it was impossible not to notice how fragile he was, but I was the one who also saw a tenacious strength underneath, a stubborn tendency to cling to his misery. He didn’t want to die, as much as he didn’t want to keep living as he was. He simply refused to see other options, and I was desperate enough that I couldn’t wait to introduce him to the intoxicating pleasures of the blood and the flesh. The wine and the bread of communion twisted into a raw feast of desires neither of us could – or wanted to – control.

He roamed the streets of New Orleans as if he didn’t know what to do with himself, new to losing in a world that had always given him everything... at least on a surface level, if one ignored what he truly longed for. Louis would never have been able to carry on with the life of lies he expected for himself, a meek little wife on his arm, kids he would never love, a lifetime of sorrow to cater to the part he believed he had to play.

What Louis won't tell you was that Paul's death was a stepping stone towards freedom. He was finally free to waste himself in sin, he found a reason to crumble as he was always bound to have done. My beautiful martyr, longing to be sacrificed at the altar and worshipped in burial clothes.

Perhaps in another life, there would have been time for us to become friends. Instead, I had him blooming under my lips, the rosiness on his cheeks fighting the indigo blue of his melancholy. We crashed into each other, Louis looking for damnation, and me for a home I could bury myself in. In the absence of the devil, I gave him what he wanted and took what was my share, a deal sealed with a kiss.

---

Of cinnamon and sugar cane

The ship took me to Saint Louis. Not the city, no, although that was to be my destination on paper. It was along the riverfront in New Orleans that my heart found a suitable home. Shortly after reaching the colony, I fell fatally in love with Louis, a young Creole business owner, graceful of speech but strong of posture, capable of pulling a knife on his brother to establish himself at the eyes of a society that would never truly respect him for who he was.

In his demeanor I saw Nicki’s ferocity as well as his agony and that was how I knew that underneath all that razzle-dazzle there was a never-ending well of sorrow. I feared that it wouldn’t take much time until that fire consumed him and burned him down to ashes, as it had once consumed my Nicki.

Yet Louis gained a hold over me far more powerful than Nicolas had ever had.

And I wonder sometimes if I didn’t look to Louis to prove that I could do better than I had with Nicki, if I didn’t start a friendship with Louis to measure him out and make sure that he would be able to prevail where I had first failed.

But I loved him, plain and simple.

He was tortured and it seemed that no one but me could see it. He was utterly beautiful and yet people looked at him as if he was only worth as much as he served their purposes. It’s no surprise that a man in his position refused to show any vulnerability to the world at large, refused to let anyone see the sensitive soul underneath. How he bled under all that strength, how I wanted to pump him with enough powerful blood that he would never feel as if he had to hide again.

What Louis won't tell you was that Paul's death was a stepping stone towards freedom. He could finally walk away from the responsibilities that shackled him, and I knew he would be delivered right to me. Yet it's Louis we're talking about, Saint Louis, making everybody's problems his own even as he raged at God and the world for forsaking him.

He spoke to me as a friend and I heard the pleas to give him the means to transcend the life he knew. Under my lips, he melted like sugar and tasted like cinnamon, sweetest of spices. He needed a home where he could be himself, I had an empty nest to offer. In the absence of the devil, I gave him what he wanted and took what was my share, a deal sealed with a kiss.

#//beginning of the writing obvs comes straight from tvl #for comparison!!! reasons!!!#l. [you feel your heart taking root in your body] c: louis #l. [do you love me now?] r:&louis #//may get another tag for the other verse IDK YET LESTAT JUST HAS A LOT OF THOUGHTS OVER LOUISES

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hellsitesonlybookclub · 3 months

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It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis

Chapter 15-16

CHAPTER XV

USUALLY I'm pretty mild, in fact many of my friends are kind enough to call it "Folksy," when I'm writing or speechifying. My ambition is to "live by the side of the road and be a friend to man." But I hope that none of the gentlemen who have honored me with their enmity think for one single moment that when I run into a gross enough public evil or a persistent enough detractor, I can't get up on my hind legs and make a sound like a two-tailed grizzly in April. So right at the start of this account of my ten-year fight with them, as private citizen, State Senator, and U. S. Senator, let me say that the Sangfrey River Light, Power, and Fuel Corporation are—and I invite a suit for libel—the meanest, lowest, cowardliest gang of yellow-livered, back-slapping, hypocritical gun-toters, bomb-throwers, ballot-stealers, ledger-fakers, givers of bribes, suborners of perjury, scab-hirers, and general lowdown crooks, liars, and swindlers that ever tried to do an honest servant of the People out of an election—not but what I have always succeeded in licking them, so that my indignation at these homicidal kleptomaniacs is not personal but entirely on behalf of the general public.

Zero Hour, Berzelius Windrip

ON Wednesday, January 6, 1937, just a fortnight before his inauguration, President-Elect Windrip announced his appointments of cabinet members and of diplomats.

Secretary of State: his former secretary and press-agent, Lee Sarason, who also took the position of High Marshal, or Commander-in-Chief, of the Minute Men, which organization was to be established permanently, as an innocent marching club.

Secretary of the Treasury: one Webster R. Skittle, president of the prosperous Fur & Hide National Bank of St. Louis—Mr. Skittle had once been indicted on a charge of defrauding the government on his income tax, but he had been acquitted, more or less, and during the campaign, he was said to have taken a convincing way of showing his faith in Buzz Windrip as the Savior of the Forgotten Men.

Secretary of War: Colonel Osceola Luthorne, formerly editor of the Topeka (Kans.) Argus, and the Fancy Goods and Novelties Gazette; more recently high in real estate. His title came from his position on the honorary staff of the Governor of Tennessee. He had long been a friend and fellow campaigner of Windrip.

It was a universal regret that Bishop Paul Peter Prang should have refused the appointment as Secretary of War, with a letter in which he called Windrip "My dear Friend and Collaborator" and asserted that he had actually meant it when he had said he desired no office. Later, it was a similar regret when Father Coughlin refused the Ambassadorship to Mexico, with no letter at all but only a telegram cryptically stating, "Just six months too late."

A new cabinet position, that of Secretary of Education and Public Relations, was created. Not for months would Congress investigate the legality of such a creation, but meantime the new post was brilliantly held by Hector Macgoblin, M.D., Ph.D., Hon. Litt.D.

Senator Porkwood graced the position of Attorney General, and all the other offices were acceptably filled by men who, though they had roundly supported Windrip's almost socialistic projects for the distribution of excessive fortunes, were yet known to be thoroughly sensible men, and no fanatics.

It was said, though Doremus Jessup could never prove it, that Windrip learned from Lee Sarason the Spanish custom of getting rid of embarrassing friends and enemies by appointing them to posts abroad, preferably quite far abroad. Anyway, as Ambassador to Brazil, Windrip appointed Herbert Hoover, who not very enthusiastically accepted; as Ambassador to Germany, Senator Borah; as Governor of the Philippines, Senator Robert La Follette, who refused; and as Ambassadors to the Court of St. James's, France, and Russia, none other than Upton Sinclair, Milo Reno, and Senator Bilbo of Mississippi.

These three had a fine time. Mr. Sinclair pleased the British by taking so friendly an interest in their politics that he openly campaigned for the Independent Labor Party and issued a lively brochure called "I, Upton Sinclair, Prove That Prime-Minister Walter Elliot, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, and First Lord of the Admiralty Nancy Astor Are All Liars and Have Refused to Accept My Freely Offered Advice." Mr. Sinclair also aroused considerable interest in British domestic circles by advocating an act of Parliament forbidding the wearing of evening clothes and all hunting of foxes except with shotguns; and on the occasion of his official reception at Buckingham Palace, he warmly invited King George and Queen Mary to come and live in California.

Mr. Milo Reno, insurance salesman and former president of the National Farm Holiday Association, whom all the French royalists compared to his great predecessor, Benjamin Franklin, for forthrightness, became the greatest social favorite in the international circles of Paris, the Basses-Pyrénées, and the Riviera, and was once photographed playing tennis at Antibes with the Duc de Tropez, Lord Rothermere, and Dr. Rudolph Hess.

Senator Bilbo had, possibly, the best time of all.

Stalin asked his advice, as based on his ripe experience in the Gleichshaltung of Mississippi, about the cultural organization of the somewhat backward natives of Tadjikistan, and so valuable did it prove that Excellency Bilbo was invited to review the Moscow military celebration, the following November seventh, in the same stand with the very highest class of representatives of the classless state. It was a triumph for His Excellency. Generalissimo Voroshilov fainted after 200,000 Soviet troops, 7000 tanks, and 9000 aeroplanes had passed by; Stalin had to be carried home after reviewing 317,000; but Ambassador Bilbo was there in the stand when the very last of the 626,000 soldiers had gone by, all of them saluting him under the quite erroneous impression that he was the Chinese Ambassador; and he was still tirelessly returning their salutes, fourteen to the minute, and softly singing with them the "International."

He was less of a hit later, however, when to the unsmiling Anglo-American Association of Exiles to Soviet Russia from Imperialism, he sang to the tune of the "International" what he regarded as amusing private words of his own:

"Arise, ye prisoners of starvation, From Russia make your getaway. They all are rich in Bilbo's nation. God bless the U.S.A.!"

Mrs. Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch, after her spirited campaign for Mr. Windrip, was publicly angry that she was offered no position higher than a post in the customs office in Nome, Alaska, though this was offered to her very urgently indeed. She had demanded that there be created, especially for her, the cabinet position of Secretaryess of Domestic Science, Child Welfare, and Anti-Vice. She threatened to turn Jeffersonian, Republican, or Communistic, but in April she was heard of in Hollywood, writing the scenario for a giant picture to be called, They Did It in Greece.

As an insult and boy-from-home joke, the President-Elect appointed Franklin D. Roosevelt minister to Liberia. Mr. Roosevelt's opponents laughed very much, and opposition newspapers did cartoons of him sitting unhappily in a grass hut with a sign on which "N.R.A." had been crossed out and "U.S.A." substituted. But Mr. Roosevelt declined with so amiable a smile that the joke seemed rather to have slipped.

The followers of President Windrip trumpeted that it was significant that he should be the first president inaugurated not on March fourth, but on January twentieth, according to the provision of the new Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution. It was a sign straight from Heaven (though, actually, Heaven had not been the author of the amendment, but Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska), and proved that Windrip was starting a new paradise on earth.

The inauguration was turbulent. President Roosevelt declined to be present—he politely suggested that he was about half ill unto death, but that same noon he was seen in a New York shop, buying books on gardening and looking abnormally cheerful.

More than a thousand reporters, photographers, and radio men covered the inauguration. Twenty-seven constituents of Senator Porkwood, of all sexes, had to sleep on the floor of the Senator's office, and a hall-bedroom in the suburb of Bladensburg rented for thirty dollars for two nights. The presidents of Brazil, the Argentine, and Chile flew to the inauguration in a Pan-American aeroplane, and Japan sent seven hundred students on a special train from Seattle.

A motor company in Detroit had presented to Windrip a limousine with armor plate, bulletproof glass, a hidden nickel-steel safe for papers, a concealed private bar, and upholstery made from the Troissant tapestries of 1670. But Buzz chose to drive from his home to the Capitol in his old Hupmobile sedan, and his driver was a youngster from his home town whose notion of a uniform for state occasions was a blue-serge suit, red tie, and derby hat. Windrip himself did wear a topper, but he saw to it that Lee Sarason saw to it that the one hundred and thirty million plain citizens learned, by radio, even while the inaugural parade was going on, that he had borrowed the topper for this one sole occasion from a New York Republican Representative who had ancestors.

But following Windrip was an un-Jacksonian escort of soldiers: the American Legion and, immensely grander than the others, the Minute Men, wearing trench helmets of polished silver and led by Colonel Dewey Haik in scarlet tunic and yellow riding-breeches and helmet with golden plumes.

Solemnly, for once looking a little awed, a little like a small-town boy on Broadway, Windrip took the oath, administered by the Chief Justice (who disliked him very much indeed) and, edging even closer to the microphone, squawked, "My fellow citizens, as the President of the United States of America, I want to inform you that the real New Deal has started right this minute, and we're all going to enjoy the manifold liberties to which our history entitles us—and have a whale of a good time doing it! I thank you!"

That was his first act as President. His second was to take up residence in the White House, where he sat down in the East Room in his stocking feet and shouted at Lee Sarason, "This is what I've been planning to do now for six years! I bet this is what Lincoln used to do! Now let 'em assassinate me!"

His third, in his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, was to order that the Minute Men be recognized as an unpaid but official auxiliary of the Regular Army, subject only to their own officers, to Buzz, and to High Marshal Sarason; and that rifles, bayonets, automatic pistols, and machine guns be instantly issued to them by government arsenals. That was at 4 P.M. Since 3 P.M., all over the country, bands of M.M.'s had been sitting gloating over pistols and guns, twitching with desire to seize them.

Fourth coup was a special message, next morning, to Congress (in session since January fourth, the third having been a Sunday), demanding the instant passage of a bill embodying Point Fifteen of his election platform—that he should have complete control of legislation and execution, and the Supreme Court be rendered incapable of blocking anything that it might amuse him to do.

By Joint Resolution, with less than half an hour of debate, both houses of Congress rejected that demand before 3 P.M., on January twenty-first. Before six, the President had proclaimed that a state of martial law existed during the "present crisis," and more than a hundred Congressmen had been arrested by Minute Men, on direct orders from the President. The Congressmen who were hotheaded enough to resist were cynically charged with "inciting to riot"; they who went quietly were not charged at all. It was blandly explained to the agitated press by Lee Sarason that these latter quiet lads had been so threatened by "irresponsible and seditious elements" that they were merely being safeguarded. Sarason did not use the phrase "protective arrest," which might have suggested things.

To the veteran reporters it was strange to see the titular Secretary of State, theoretically a person of such dignity and consequence that he could deal with the representatives of foreign powers, acting as press-agent and yes-man for even the President.

There were riots, instantly, all over Washington, all over America.

The recalcitrant Congressmen had been penned in the District Jail. Toward it, in the winter evening, marched a mob that was noisily mutinous toward the Windrip for whom so many of them had voted. Among the mob buzzed hundreds of Negroes, armed with knives and old pistols, for one of the kidnaped Congressmen was a Negro from Georgia, the first colored Georgian to hold high office since carpetbagger days.

Surrounding the jail, behind machine guns, the rebels found a few Regulars, many police, and a horde of Minute Men, but at these last they jeered, calling them "Minnie Mouses" and "tin soldiers" and "mama's boys." The M.M.'s looked nervously at their officers and at the Regulars who were making so professional a pretense of not being scared. The mob heaved bottles and dead fish. Half-a-dozen policemen with guns and night sticks, trying to push back the van of the mob, were buried under a human surf and came up grotesquely battered and ununiformed—those who ever did come up again. There were two shots; and one Minute Man slumped to the jail steps, another stood ludicrously holding a wrist that spurted blood.

The Minute Men—why, they said to themselves, they'd never meant to be soldiers anyway—just wanted to have some fun marching! They began to sneak into the edges of the mob, hiding their uniform caps. That instant, from a powerful loudspeaker in a lower window of the jail brayed the voice of President Berzelius Windrip:

"I am addressing my own boys, the Minute Men, everywhere in America! To you and you only I look for help to make America a proud, rich land again. You have been scorned. They thought you were the 'lower classes.' They wouldn't give you jobs. They told you to sneak off like bums and get relief. They ordered you into lousy C.C.C. camps. They said you were no good, because you were poor. I tell you that you are, ever since yesterday noon, the highest lords of the land—the aristocracy—the makers of the new America of freedom and justice. Boys! I need you! Help me—help me to help you! Stand fast! Anybody tries to block you—give the swine the point of your bayonet!"

A machine-gunner M.M., who had listened reverently, let loose. The mob began to drop, and into the backs of the wounded as they went staggering away the M.M. infantry, running, poked their bayonets. Such a juicy squash it made, and the fugitives looked so amazed, so funny, as they tumbled in grotesque heaps!

The M.M.'s hadn't, in dreary hours of bayonet drill, known this would be such sport. They'd have more of it now—and hadn't the President of the United States himself told each of them, personally, that he needed their aid?

When the remnants of Congress ventured to the Capitol, they found it seeded with M.M.'s, while a regiment of Regulars, under Major General Meinecke, paraded the grounds.

The Speaker of the House, and the Hon. Mr. Perley Beecroft, Vice- President of the United States and Presiding Officer of the Senate, had the power to declare that quorums were present. (If a lot of members chose to dally in the district jail, enjoying themselves instead of attending Congress, whose fault was that?) Both houses passed a resolution declaring Point Fifteen temporarily in effect, during the "crisis"—the legality of the passage was doubtful, but just who was to contest it, even though the members of the Supreme Court had not been placed under protective arrest... merely confined each to his own house by a squad of Minute Men!

Bishop Paul Peter Prang had (his friends said afterward) been dismayed by Windrip's stroke of state. Surely, he complained, Mr. Windrip hadn't quite remembered to include Christian Amity in the program he had taken from the League of Forgotten Men. Though Mr. Prang had contentedly given up broadcasting ever since the victory of Justice and Fraternity in the person of Berzelius Windrip, he wanted to caution the public again, but when he telephoned to his familiar station, WLFM in Chicago, the manager informed him that "just temporarily, all access to the air was forbidden," except as it was especially licensed by the offices of Lee Sarason. (Oh, that was only one of sixteen jobs that Lee and his six hundred new assistants had taken on in the past week.)

Rather timorously, Bishop Prang motored from his home in Persepolis, Indiana, to the Indianapolis airport and took a night plane for Washington, to reprove, perhaps even playfully to spank, his naughty disciple, Buzz.

He had little trouble in being admitted to see the President. In fact, he was, the press feverishly reported, at the White House for six hours, though whether he was with the President all that time they could not discover. At three in the afternoon Prang was seen to leave by a private entrance to the executive offices and take a taxi. They noted that he was pale and staggering.

In front of his hotel he was elbowed by a mob who in curiously unmenacing and mechanical tones yelped, "Lynch um—downutha enemies Windrip!" A dozen M.M.'s pierced the crowd and surrounded the Bishop. The Ensign commanding them bellowed to the crowd, so that all might hear, "You cowards leave the Bishop alone! Bishop, come with us, and we'll see you're safe!"

Millions heard on their radios that evening the official announcement that, to ward off mysterious plotters, probably Bolsheviks, Bishop Prang had been safely shielded in the district jail. And with it a personal statement from President Windrip that he was filled with joy at having been able to "rescue from the foul agitators my friend and mentor, Bishop P. P. Prang, than whom there is no man living who I so admire and respect."

There was, as yet, no absolute censorship of the press; only a confused imprisonment of journalists who offended the government or local officers of the M.M.'s; and the papers chronically opposed to Windrip carried by no means flattering hints that Bishop Prang had rebuked the President and been plain jailed, with no nonsense about a "rescue." These mutters reached Persepolis.

Not all the Persepolitans ached with love for the Bishop or considered him a modern St. Francis gathering up the little fowls of the fields in his handsome LaSalle car. There were neighbors who hinted that he was a window-peeping snooper after bootleggers and obliging grass widows. But proud of him, their best advertisement, they certainly were, and the Persepolis Chamber of Commerce had caused to be erected at the Eastern gateway to Main Street the sign: "Home of Bishop Prang, Radio's Greatest Star."

So as one man Persepolis telegraphed to Washington, demanding Prang's release, but a messenger in the Executive Offices who was a Persepolis boy (he was, it is true, a colored man, but suddenly he became a favorite son, lovingly remembered by old schoolmates) tipped off the Mayor that the telegrams were among the hundredweight of messages that were daily hauled away from the White House unanswered.

Then a quarter of the citizenry of Persepolis mounted a special train to "march" on Washington. It was one of those small incidents which the opposition press could use as a bomb under Windrip, and the train was accompanied by a score of high-ranking reporters from Chicago and, later, from Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and New York.

While the train was on its way—and it was curious what delays and sidetrackings it encountered—a company of Minute Men at Logansport, Indiana, rebelled against having to arrest a group of Catholic nuns who were accused of having taught treasonably. High Marshal Sarason felt that there must be a Lesson, early and impressive. A battalion of M.M.'s, sent from Chicago in fast trucks, arrested the mutinous company, and shot every third man.

When the Persepolitans reached Washington, they were tearfully informed, by a brigadier of M.M.'s who met them at the Union Station, that poor Bishop Prang had been so shocked by the treason of his fellow Indianans that he had gone melancholy mad and they had tragically been compelled to shut him up in St. Elizabeth's government insane asylum.

No one willing to carry news about him ever saw Bishop Prang again.

The Brigadier brought greetings to the Persepolitans from the President himself, and an invitation to stay at the Willard, at government expense. Only a dozen accepted; the rest took the first train back, not amiably; and from then on there was one town in America in which no M.M. ever dared to appear in his ducky forage cap and dark-blue tunic.

The Chief of Staff of the Regular Army had been deposed; in his place was Major General Emmanuel Coon. Doremus and his like were disappointed by General Coon's acceptance, for they had always been informed, even by the Nation, that Emmanuel Coon, though a professional army officer who did enjoy a fight, preferred that that fight be on the side of the Lord; that he was generous, literate, just, and a man of honor—and honor was the one quality that Buzz Windrip wasn't even expected to understand. Rumor said that Coon (as "Nordic" a Kentuckian as ever existed, a descendant of men who had fought beside Kit Carson and Commodore Perry) was particularly impatient with the puerility of anti-Semitism, and that nothing so pleased him as, when he heard new acquaintances being superior about the Jews, to snarl, "Did you by any chance happen to notice that my name is Emmanuel Coon and that Coon might be a corruption of some name rather familiar on the East Side of New York?"

"Oh well, I suppose even General Coon feels, 'Orders are Orders,'" sighed Doremus.

President Windrip's first extended proclamation to the country was a pretty piece of literature and of tenderness. He explained that powerful and secret enemies of American principles—one rather gathered that they were a combination of Wall Street and Soviet Russia—upon discovering, to their fury, that he, Berzelius, was going to be President, had planned their last charge. Everything would be tranquil in a few months, but meantime there was a Crisis, during which the country must "bear with him."

He recalled the military dictatorship of Lincoln and Stanton during the Civil War, when civilian suspects were arrested without warrant. He hinted how delightful everything was going to be— right away now—just a moment—just a moment's patience—when he had things in hand; and he wound up with a comparison of the Crisis to the urgency of a fireman rescuing a pretty girl from a "conflagration," and carrying her down a ladder, for her own sake, whether she liked it or not, and no matter how appealingly she might kick her pretty ankles.

The whole country laughed.

"Great card, that Buzz, but mighty competent guy," said the electorate.

"I should worry whether Bish Prang or any other nut is in the boobyhatch, long as I get my five thousand bucks a year, like Windrip promised," said Shad Ledue to Charley Betts, the furniture man.

It had all happened within the eight days following Windrip's inauguration.

CHAPTER XVI

I HAVE no desire to be President. I would much rather do my humble best as a supporter of Bishop Prang, Ted Bilbo, Gene Talmadge or any other broad-gauged but peppy Liberal. My only longing is to Serve.

Zero Hour, Berzelius Windrip.

LIKE many bachelors given to vigorous hunting and riding, Buck Titus was a fastidious housekeeper, and his mid-Victorian farmhouse fussily neat. It was also pleasantly bare: the living room a monastic hall of heavy oak chairs, tables free of dainty covers, numerous and rather solemn books of history and exploration, with the conventional "sets," and a tremendous fireplace of rough stone. And the ash trays were solid pottery and pewter, able to cope with a whole evening of cigarette-smoking. The whisky stood honestly on the oak buffet, with siphons, and with cracked ice always ready in a thermos jug.

It would, however, have been too much to expect Buck Titus not to have red-and-black imitation English hunting-prints.

This hermitage, always grateful to Doremus, was sanctuary now, and only with Buck could he adequately damn Windrip & Co. and people like Francis Tasbrough, who in February was still saying, "Yes, things do look kind of hectic down there in Washington, but that's just because there's so many of these bullheaded politicians that still think they can buck Windrip. Besides, anyway, things like that couldn't ever happen here in New England."

And, indeed, as Doremus went on his lawful occasions past the red-brick Georgian houses, the slender spires of old white churches facing the Green, as he heard the lazy irony of familiar greetings from his acquaintances, men as enduring as their Vermont hills, it seemed to him that the madness in the capital was as alien and distant and unimportant as an earthquake in Tibet.

Constantly, in the Informer, he criticized the government but not too acidly.

The hysteria can't last; be patient, and wait and see, he counseled his readers.

It was not that he was afraid of the authorities. He simply did not believe that this comic tyranny could endure. It can't happen here, said even Doremus—even now.

The one thing that most perplexed him was that there could be a dictator seemingly so different from the fervent Hitlers and gesticulating Fascists and the Cæsars with laurels round bald domes; a dictator with something of the earthy American sense of humor of a Mark Twain, a George Ade, a Will Rogers, an Artemus Ward. Windrip could be ever so funny about solemn jaw-drooping opponents, and about the best method of training what he called "a Siamese flea hound." Did that, puzzled Doremus, make him less or more dangerous?

Then he remembered the most cruel-mad of all pirates, Sir Henry Morgan, who had thought it ever so funny to sew a victim up in wet rawhide and watch it shrink in the sun.

From the perseverance with which they bickered, you could tell that Buck Titus and Lorinda were much fonder of each other than they would admit. Being a person who read little and therefore took what he did read seriously, Buck was distressed by the normally studious Lorinda's vacation liking for novels about distressed princesses, and when she airily insisted that they were better guides to conduct than Anthony Trollope or Thomas Hardy, Buck roared at her and, in the feebleness of baited strength, nervously filled pipes and knocked them out against the stone mantel. But he approved of the relationship between Doremus and Lorinda, which only he (and Shad Ledue!) had guessed, and over Doremus, ten years his senior, this shaggy-headed woodsman fussed like a thwarted spinster.

To both Doremus and Lorinda, Buck's overgrown shack became their refuge. And they needed it, late in February, five weeks or thereabouts after Windrip's election.

Despite strikes and riots all over the country, bloodily put down by the Minute Men, Windrip's power in Washington was maintained. The most liberal four members of the Supreme Court resigned and were replaced by surprisingly unknown lawyers who called President Windrip by his first name. A number of Congressmen were still being "protected" in the District of Columbia jail; others had seen the blinding light forever shed by the goddess Reason and happily returned to the Capitol. The Minute Men were increasingly loyal— they were still unpaid volunteers, but provided with "expense accounts" considerably larger than the pay of the regular troops. Never in American history had the adherents of a President been so well satisfied; they were not only appointed to whatever political jobs there were but to ever so many that really were not; and with such annoyances as Congressional Investigations hushed, the official awarders of contracts were on the merriest of terms with all contractors.... One veteran lobbyist for steel corporations complained that there was no more sport in his hunting—you were not only allowed but expected to shoot all government purchasing-agents sitting.

None of the changes was so publicized as the Presidential mandate abruptly ending the separate existence of the different states, and dividing the whole country into eight "provinces"—thus, asserted Windrip, economizing by reducing the number of governors and all other state officers and, asserted Windrip's enemies, better enabling him to concentrate his private army and hold the country.

The new "Northeastern Province" included all of New York State north of a line through Ossining, and all of New England except a strip of Connecticut shore as far east as New Haven. This was, Doremus admitted, a natural and homogeneous division, and even more natural seemed the urban and industrial "Metropolitan Province," which included Greater New York, Westchester County up to Ossining, Long Island, the strip of Connecticut dependent on New York City, New Jersey, northern Delaware, and Pennsylvania as far as Reading and Scranton.

Each province was divided into numbered districts, each district into lettered counties, each county into townships and cities, and only in these last did the old names, with their traditional appeal, remain to endanger President Windrip by memories of honorable local history. And it was gossiped that, next, the government would change even the town names—that they were already thinking fondly of calling New York "Berzelian" and San Francisco "San Sarason." Probably that gossip was false.

The Northeastern Province's six districts were: 1, Upper New York State west of and including Syracuse; 2, New York east of it; 3, Vermont and New Hampshire; 4, Maine; 5, Massachusetts; 6, Rhode Island and the unraped portion of Connecticut.

District 3, Doremus Jessup's district, was divided into the four "counties" of southern and northern Vermont, and southern and northern New Hampshire, with Hanover for capital—the District Commissioner merely chased the Dartmouth students out and took over the college buildings for his offices, to the considerable approval of Amherst, Williams, and Yale.

So Doremus was living, now, in Northeastern Province, District 3, County B, township of Beulah, and over him for his admiration and rejoicing were a provincial commissioner, a district commissioner, a county commissioner, an assistant county commissioner in charge of Beulah Township, and all their appertaining M.M. guards and emergency military judges.

Citizens who had lived in any one state for more than ten years seemed to resent more hotly the loss of that state's identity than they did the castration of the Congress and Supreme Court of the United States—indeed, they resented it almost as much as the fact that, while late January, February, and most of March went by, they still were not receiving their governmental gifts of $5000 (or perhaps it would beautifully be $10,000) apiece; had indeed received nothing more than cheery bulletins from Washington to the effect that the "Capital Levy Board," or C.L.B. was holding sessions.

Virginians whose grandfathers had fought beside Lee shouted that they'd be damned if they'd give up the hallowed state name and form just one arbitrary section of an administrative unit containing eleven Southern states; San Franciscans who had considered Los Angelinos even worse than denizens of Miami now wailed with agony when California was sundered and the northern portion lumped in with Oregon, Nevada, and others as the "Mountain and Pacific Province," while southern California was, without her permission, assigned to the Southwestern Province, along with Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Hawaii. As some hint of Buzz Windrip's vision for the future, it was interesting to read that this Southwestern Province was also to be permitted to claim "all portions of Mexico which the United States may from time to time find it necessary to take over, as a protection against the notorious treachery of Mexico and the Jewish plots there hatched."

"Lee Sarason is even more generous than Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg in protecting the future of other countries," sighed Doremus.

As Provincial Commissioner of the Northeastern Province, comprising Upper New York State and New England, was appointed Colonel Dewey Haik, that soldier-lawyer-politician-aviator who was the chilliest-blooded and most arrogant of all the satellites of Windrip yet had so captivated miners and fishermen during the campaign. He was a strong-flying eagle who liked his meat bloody. As District Commissioner of District 3—Vermont and New Hampshire—appeared, to Doremus's mingled derision and fury, none other than John Sullivan Reek, that stuffiest of stuffed-shirts, that most gaseous gas bag, that most amenable machine politician of Northern New England; a Republican ex-governor who had, in the alembic of Windrip's patriotism, rosily turned Leaguer.

No one had ever troubled to be obsequious to the Hon. J. S. Reek, even when he had been Governor. The weediest back-country Representative had called him "Johnny," in the gubernatorial mansion (twelve rooms and a leaky roof); and the youngest reporter had bawled, "Well, what bull you handing out today, Ex?"

It was this Commissioner Reek who summoned all the editors in his district to meet him at his new viceregal lodge in Dartmouth Library and receive the precious privileged information as to how much President Windrip and his subordinate commissioners admired the gentlemen of the press.

Before he left for the press conference in Hanover, Doremus received from Sissy a "poem"—at least she called it that—which Buck Titus, Lorinda Pike, Julian Falck, and she had painfully composed, late at night, in Buck's fortified manor house:

Be meek with Reek, Go fake with Haik. One rhymes with sneak, And t' other with snake. Haik, with his beak, Is on the make, But Sullivan Reek— Oh God!

"Well, anyway, Windrip's put everybody to work. And he's driven all these unsightly billboards off the highways—much better for the tourist trade," said all the old editors, even those who wondered if the President wasn't perhaps the least bit arbitrary.

As he drove to Hanover, Doremus saw hundreds of huge billboards by the road. But they bore only Windrip propaganda and underneath, "with the compliments of a loyal firm" and—very large—"Montgomery Cigarettes" or "Jonquil Foot Soap." On the short walk from a parking-space to the former Dartmouth campus, three several men muttered to him, "Give us a nickel for cuppa coffee, Boss—a Minnie Mouse has got my job and the Mouses won't take me—they say I'm too old." But that may have been propaganda from Moscow.

On the long porch of the Hanover Inn, officers of the Minute Men were reclining in deck chairs, their spurred boots (in all the M.M. organization there was no cavalry) up on the railing.

Doremus passed a science building in front of which was a pile of broken laboratory glassware, and in one stripped laboratory he could see a small squad of M.M.'s drilling.

District Commissioner John Sullivan Reek affectionately received the editors in a classroom.... Old men, used to being revered as prophets, sitting anxiously in trifling chairs, facing a fat man in the uniform of an M.M. commander, who smoked an unmilitary cigar as his pulpy hand waved greeting.

Reek took not more than an hour to relate what would have taken the most intelligent man five or six hours—that is, five minutes of speech and the rest of the five hours to recover from the nausea caused by having to utter such shameless rot.... President Windrip, Secretary of State Sarason, Provincial Commissioner Haik, and himself, John Sullivan Reek, they were all being misrepresented by the Republicans, the Jeffersonians, the Communists, England, the Nazis, and probably the jute and herring industries; and what the government wanted was for any reporter to call on any member of this Administration, and especially on Commissioner Reek, at any time—except perhaps between 3 and 7 A.M.—and "get the real low-down."

Excellency Reek announced, then: "And now, gentlemen, I am giving myself the privilege of introducing you to all four of the County Commissioners, who were just chosen yesterday. Probably each of you will know personally the commissioner from your own county, but I want you to intimately and cooperatively know all four, because, whomever they may be, they join with me in my unquenchable admiration of the press."

The four County Commissioners, as one by one they shambled into the room and were introduced, seemed to Doremus an oddish lot: A moth-eaten lawyer known more for his quotations from Shakespeare and Robert W. Service than for his shrewdness before a jury. He was luminously bald except for a prickle of faded rusty hair, but you felt that, if he had his rights, he would have the floating locks of a tragedian of 1890.

A battling clergyman famed for raiding roadhouses.

A rather shy workman, an authentic proletarian, who seemed surprised to find himself there. (He was replaced, a month later, by a popular osteopath with an interest in politics and vegetarianism.)

The fourth dignitary to come in and affectionately bow to the editors, a bulky man, formidable-looking in his uniform as a battalion leader of Minute Men, introduced as the Commissioner for northern Vermont, Doremus Jessup's county, was Mr. Oscar Ledue, formerly known as "Shad."

Mr. Reek called him "Captain" Ledue. Doremus remembered that Shad's only military service, prior to Windrip's election, had been as an A.E.F. private who had never got beyond a training-camp in America and whose fiercest experience in battle had been licking a corporal when in liquor.

"Mr. Jessup," bubbled the Hon. Mr. Reek, "I imagine you must have met Captain Ledue—comes from your charming city."

"Uh-uh-ur," said Doremus.

"Sure," said Captain Ledue. "I've met old Jessup, all right, all right! He don't know what it's all about. He don't know the first thing about the economics of our social Revolution. He's a Cho-vinis. But he isn't such a bad old coot, and I'll let him ride as long as he behaves himself!"

"Splendid!" said the Hon. Mr. Reek.

#hellsitesonlybookclub #bookblr #Sinclair Lewis

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lu-undy · 4 years

Text

Chapter 33 - SBT

Here it is!

"You still want to drive or shall I?"

"You keep your filthy spooky hands off of her!"

"Filthy hands? Me?" Lucien exclaimed as they got closer to the van. "Bushman, my hands are in excellent hygienic and cosmetic condition, unlike yours!"

Lucien and Mundy hopped in the van. They fastened their seatbelts but, to Lucien's surprise, nothing happened. Mundy did not start the engine. He just had his hands on the steering wheel and he was staring at nothing in front of him.

"Bushman?"

"Hm." Mundy woke up from his daydream.

"Something is the matter?" Lucien asked as Mundy started the van and started driving off.

"N-no, it's just… I'm surprised you know Lulu, is all."

Lucien smiled.

"Head for the old centre of town… He is an interesting character, Lulu. Like any artist I believe, he has been cursed."

"What d'you mean?"

"The man is way too romantic for his own good. He sees beauty in everything, even in the most tragic disaster." Lucien said smiling, albeit sadly. Of course he was talking about himself, but for Mundy, it was Lulu that it was all about. "When he sings, he gets possessed by the words that come out of his lips, as if they had control over him and not the other way around."

"You seem to know him so well… How did you meet and become friends?"

"It was… It was decades ago now, in Paris, even before I became a sp-... Uh…"

"You wanted to say before you became a spook, eh?" Mundy joked.

"Oui, you are contaminating me with your jargon, Bushman. But oui, it was before I got my current position." Mon Dieu, what would have happened if he had slipped and said he was a spy?

"You said Lulu was singing in the poshest place in Paris, right?"

"Oui, he was. And what a sight…! His shows were phenomenal, people came from all around the world to see him. Some were even lucky enough to share a chat, or a meal with him. Oh that man led the happiest of lives, and he loved it there."

"What happened? Why did he leave Paris?"

"I am not sure entirely, but he stopped singing. Maybe he wanted to take a break, retire for a while."

"And then he decided to sing again?" Mundy asked.

"Apparently, oui. I guess retirement did not suit him, or the other way around, God only knows."

"Why come to Australia? That seems awfully far from home."

"He is well travelled. Well, I guess he has travelled to such an extent that nowhere is really home anymore."

Mundy heard the distress in Lucien's voice. It struck him. Why was the man in the mask distraught about that?

"You almost sound… sad. Were you that close friends with Lulu?" He asked.

"Oh, oui, the best of friends." Lucien answered. "I think I got to know him at the most innocent point of my life. I was a young adult, carefree, not a clue about the cruelty of life, or so little. Each time I think of Lulu, his personality, it brings me back decades ago that feel like another life altogether."

"I guess it makes sense if all that happened before… y'know." Mundy didn't dare say that it had happened before Lucien lost his fiancée and son.

"Oui, it did."

"Hm, I get it…"

"As much as the man is cursed, he is extremely lucky." Lucien said.

"What d'you mean?"

"Don't you sometimes wish you could feel something else than just this brutal lust for revenge?" Lucien asked.

Mundy's eyebrows jumped at the unexpected burst of truth.

"Yeah actually. I uh… Sometimes I even wonder how it all was when I had my parents, how happy I was without feeling happy. I didn't know I was happy. If I could go back in time, I'd tell myself to feel privileged."

"But would your younger self understand that privilege?" Lucien asked and Mundy's eyes shot to him.

"I can see you were very close to Lulu, you talk like him."

"Have you talked to him? Oh, by the way take it right here and we should park nearby."

"Alright." Mundy flicked his blinking light and took the turn. "And yeah, I went to have a chat with him."

"Lucky you! The man is arrogant and doesn't just let anyone talk to him." Lucien answered, still playing Mundy like a damn fiddle.

"Really?" Mundy's heart jumped. He felt special…

"Oui, I assure you. And given the long queue of ladies and admirers of all sorts, Lulu has no choice but to live like that, pushing people who look at him with fondness away from his life "

"Oh, wow… I had no idea…" Mundy parked and stopped the van. He looked down and fell deep in thought, his hands still on the steering wheel.

"But I guess that if he accepted a chat with you, he must have found something worth his while under that brown hat of yours, hm?"

Mundy looked at Lucien. The French bastard was smirking and exited the van. L sure did have quite the smirk, a bit like Lulu, Mundy thought. But that mask made him look so… non-human.

"Let us go." Lucien opened the door for his colleague to get in.

"Oh…" Mundy looked at the tailor's shop. He recognised it. It was the one he had come to when he had asked about that blue and golden button!

"Come on, Bushman. I know you have rarely seen suits of that standard, but don't be too impressed." Lucien mocked him.

"Spook…"

They both slipped in.

"Ah! L!" Richard and his impeccably trimmed moustache welcomed the Frenchman warmly. "Bonjour mon ami!"

[Hello, my friend!]

The two Frenchmen shook hands while Mundy hoped the tailor wouldn't recognise him...

"Please, Richard, meet my friend, M." Lucien turned to face Mundy and frowned. "Bushman, your manners!" Lucien pushed himself to the tip of his toes and snatched Mundy's hat off his head.

"Oi! My hat!" Mundy tried to take it back but Lucien turned away from him.

"You are inside, you don't need it, you impolite!" Lucien answered. "Richard, please pardon my friend's manners."

"No problem at all." Mundy and Richard shook hands. "How may I help today? I hope you liked the few suits I made for you, L?"

"They were divine, Richard, as usual. And I think I am getting used to wearing a bit more colour now."

"Ah, you see? I told you!" Richard exclaimed happily.

"Shall we take a seat, please? Our request might take a bit of explaining." Lucien asked.

"Of course, please."

Lucien and Mundy sat on a sofa while Richard was on an armchair in front of them.

"So, what will you need?"

"We are attending a masquerade ball and we need disguises, costumes."

"Ah, I see. M, do you mind standing up and removing your jacket, please?"

Mundy looked at Lucien who nodded, and the Aussie removed his sleeveless jacket as he stood up.

"Here."

"Oh, a tall man indeed…" Richard stood up and started taking measurements. "Hm… Paul, tu peux venir prendre les mesures du Monsieur s'il te plaît?"

[Paul, can you please come and take the measurements of the man here?]

Paul and his brother emerged from the workshop and got busy around Mundy. The Aussie felt awkward standing up between Lucien and Richard, with both Richard's sons turning around him with tape measures. He kept looking at what they were doing, turning his head left and right nervously.

"What costumes do you want?"

"I would like to go for a costume of Le Roi Soleil."

"Didn't you want to go Louis-the-whatever?" Mundy asked.

Lucien rolled his eyes.

"Le Roi Soleil is the Sun King, which is the nickname that Louis the Fourteenth got, because he radiated such strong power, it was as if France was ruled by the sun itself."

"Crikey… You never stop, do you…?"

Lucien smirked and tilted his head on the side.

"I see you are starting to know me."

"And for you M, what would you like?" Richard asked.

"To be honest, I have no idea, mate."

"Give him something that suits him and he can keep it even outside of the party. A new suit won't hurt him."

"Ah, I see. Shall I also make masks?" Richard gestured to his sons who took notes.

"Naturally. M, I would recommend one for you too." Lucien said.

"Why?"

"First, to hide your unpleasant face."

"Spook…"

Even Richard cracked a smile under his moustache.

"And second, it is better to hide your identity. The longer they don't know who you are, the better."

"Is it why you wear your mask?"

Richard's eyes went to Lucien.

"Amongst other things, oui." Lucien looked at Richard. "How long do you think it will take before we can get the costumes?"

The tailor was looking at his son's notepad and Mundy's measurements. His eyes went up to the hunter.

"A well-built man you are, sturdy shoulders, tall…" Richard sprang off his armchair. He put his hands on Mundy's shoulders and opened them. "Don't stand slouched, straighten your spine, here, that is a nice posture, I will spare you the chin…"

"What about my chin?" Mundy asked, as he had just been re-arranged by the tailor as if he had been made of clay.

"Ah, watch this." Richard said and raised his index finger. "L, would you mind standing up, please?"

"But of course." Lucien stood up next to the hunter and pulled the panes of his jacket to close the button again.

"Look here, M, this is how to stand tall and proud. Look at the way L holds his head, the chin slightly up, the chest proud, without overdoing it, that posture!" Richard was pointing as he was turning around the Frenchman. "The curves on his spine, the fabric of the vest just follows it almost poetically, and that is not talking about his proportions!"

Lucien himself started to blush and looked at his feet.

"This man's body has been designed for modelling!"

Mundy squinted and as he stared more, he started to see Lulu's graceful silhouette on L.

"In more than thirty years in the business, I haven't met a single man, not a single person, with a body like his."

"Richard…" Lucien looked at the floor, slightly embarrassed. He brushed his eyebrow with a finger and licked his lips.

"That, and an exquisite taste in clothing!" Richard went on, as if Lucien hadn't interrupted him. And he turned to Mundy. "But you…"

He got closer to the tall Aussie and pointed an accusative index finger at the man.

"You have no understanding of fashion. You do not honour the fabrics that you wear and vice versa. You dress up because you have been raised to and that is one of the very few things that still separates you from the animal."

Lucien raised his eyes to Mundy who lowered his, and faced the other way.

"But look at you…! Such potential! If you just saw the numbers! Paul, the notepad!"

Paul handed his father the notepad on which he had written Mundy's measurements.

"It's all here! The numbers! Now, words might lie, faces might lie, anything can lie, but numbers…? Numbers cannot lie! And do you know what these mean?"

Mundy didn't dare move. Lucien was watching the whole scene unravel in the centre of the room, surrounded by rolls of fabric on wooden shelves, under yellow lights.

"The numbers that I see here do not mean what I see! I see a man whose clothes are older than my sons' careers but the numbers on the paper here, they scream! Such injustice! You could be so much more! Why do you treat your clothes this way…? Why do you choose to present yourself this way?"

"I didn't choose."

"Of course you did! And of course you do, everyday!" Richard answered. "Now, I will take it as my responsibility to show you the potential that these numbers show. I will make a suit that you will keep for your entire life, and it shall reveal what you could be. Do I have your agreement?"

Richard extended his hand and looked Mundy dead in the eyes. The Aussie raised his eyes from the floor up to Richard.

"A-alright." He shyly raised his hand and Richard shook it firmly.

"Right, now L, should I give him the same pockets as you?"

"Non, the classic ones and just two extras."

"Dimensions?"

"Same as my jacket ones."

"Understood. Fine, now, was that all?"

"I do believe so." Lucien said. "Thank you a thousand times, Richard."

"My pleasure."

A few moments later, Lucien and Mundy were back in the van.

"Gosh, your friend is… Intense." Mundy said.

"To be honest with you, I never saw him getting so emotional." Lucien answered. "You, Bushman, you have your effect on people. First, it was Lulu, now Richard, who next? Me?"

"Yeah, well, I don't know. I never asked to have people shout at me about my clothes, eh."

"And yet…" Lucien looked at his friend. He stared at him with a smile.

"And yet what?"

"Can you drive me back to Maurice's? I need my motorcycle." Lucien answered.

Mundy looked at him for a second. What the hell did he mean, that Spook?

"Yeah." He started the van and off they went. The ride was mostly silent if one doesn't count the rumble of the engine.

"You could bring your sheila to see Lulu. If she likes you, she likes posh stuff and she'll no doubt love Lulu."

"My sheila?" Lucien repeated.

"Yeah, your sheila, the one that waitress at the diner talked about… what was the name again… Payrlee or something? She French too I guess?"

Lucien was about to burst out laughing. Mundy thought that Perle was a woman…

"Her name is Perle, or for you in English, Pearl."

"Ah, right. Poetic."

"Indeed, and again I am surprised in a good way that you of all people appreciate the poetry. But non, I found her here in Australia, not in France."

"Ah, so it's fairly recent, eh?"

"Oui."

"Guess it makes sense."

"What?" Lucien asked.

"You're a classy bloke, you've got the manners goin' and all. No doubt the sheilas queue for miles for you, eh?"

"I cannot complain in that regard." Lucien smirked.

"Must be a French thing."

"What?"

"It's a bit like with Lulu. The other day he received heaps of letters from sheilas."

"Quite the interest you have with that singer, M."

"What?!" Mundy blushed and his grip on the steering wheel hardened.

"In French we say 'Tous les chemins mènent à Rome.', 'All the roads lead to Rome', but with you, all the discussions lead to Lulu it seems."

Mundy didn't know what to answer as he started to realise that yes, he was quite interested in the singer.

"Quite the admirer, you are." Lucien said.

Mundy decided to just be honest about it.

"It's the way he sings, not the bloke himself, although he isn't unpleasant to watch."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, he has a way of… Mh… No, I can't tell you."

"Why not?" Lucien asked.

"Because you'd tell him and also, you'd bully me for it and I don't need that."

Mundy got startled when he felt L's hand on his shoulder and it reminded him of Lulu's exact same gesture.

"M, I do like to laugh but if matters are serious, I am also able to lend an ear, as you already know."

"Do I?"

"At the Doctor's, weren't you the one who accepted to speak openly as if I wasn't there?" Lucien asked and Mundy sighed.

"Yeah, I guess."

"So you know I can listen. Go ahead if you want to speak."

"Hm… It's just… Lulu just speaks about his feelings so freely, it's insane…!"

"Do you envy that? Do you wish you too could do that?" Lucien asked and Mundy briefly looked at him before his eyes snapped back on the road. But in that furtive gaze, Lucien had read the distress that Mundy failed to hide. "I can understand." He added, to try and help.

"I'm sure you could understand the nightmare it is to live without your loved ones for so long, but I'm not sure you can anymore."

"Why?" Lucien asked.

"Because you have someone again now."

Mundy arrived in Maurice's district and parked the van where they had started their journey. He pulled the handbrake and cut the engine. Silence fell in the van.

"Having someone now does not erase the decade of my life that I have wasted." Lucien said.

"No, but it helps to forget it."

"M, I will tell you something." Mundy raised his eyes to the man in the mask. He looked focused. "I found someone who helps immensely, but if they could speak here, they would tell you that they very much feel the weight of those years on me and on us. She helps, yes, but I know that she will never heal me."

Mundy's eyebrows jumped.

"Why? How d'you know that?"

Lucien's lips pursed up in a smile.

"If you knew Perle, you would understand. She isn't the sort of company that you would expect to help me beat La Solitude completely and even worse…"

"What d'you mean worse?"

"Paradoxically enough, sometimes she makes me feel worse."

"How?"

"Because she makes me remember those easier, sweeter times. She makes me remember those times and the fact that those times ended. She is a constant reminder that whatever I have with her, or with you, or with anyone is bound to end. Nothing is ever-lasting, nothing truly means anything." Lucien answered.

"So she never goes away, the Solitude, eh? That's it, we just have to deal with it till we get Duchemin, kill him and then get killed for it, hm?" Mundy concluded.

"Non, M. What I am only saying is very specific to my case. What I am saying is that Perle helps, but she will never heal me completely."

"Can we even heal completely?" Mundy let his hands rise and fall on the steering wheel. "Can we even get out of that… that…"

"That constant, dark grey cloud around our heads?" Lucien finished his sentence for him. "I believe we can, M. I am older than you and I have seen my fair share of things in life. I have seen things your mind would not comprehend and so have you, only you don't see it that way."

Mundy raised an eyebrow, confused.

"Like what?"

"Look there." Lucien pointed through the window, at the children playing in the dirty street. "What do you see?"

"It's a bunch of kids playin'. What about it?"

"You are only seeing that?" Lucien asked. "There is so much that you are seeing but choosing to dismiss…"

"Really? Like what? What do you see then?"

"M, those children who are playing, look at their old clothes, look at their messy hair, look at the dirty street they are playing in, with no adult supervision. This is in fact a horrible sight. These children, our future, those who tomorrow will decide of the rules of our world, they are playing in the dirtiest street of their town, with an old, half-deflated ball, with no adult to make sure they are safe, and they do not care about it. And that is the worst part."

"Why?"

"Because it means that not only do they not have parents to care for them, they also now are completely familiar with the idea of them not being worth any adult's attention. That is why each time they come to deliver a message to me, I…" Lucien took a deep breath. "They remind me of my Jérémy. Little blond heads, blue eyes, an innocent outlook on life, not a care in the world, why would he?"

Mundy felt the distress in his friend's voice. He put a hand on his shoulder and tapped it gently.

"But these children, M, they do not see all this like I do. Non, they are having fun! They are enjoying their game that they are playing with the best ball they have ever had. They are growing up together, playing and enjoying their time, a time that they are not counting at all!"

Lucien turned his face away from his window to look at Mundy.

"This is what I find incredible and this is what makes me think that we can heal from whatever Duchemin did to us. The children in their non-existent wisdom show it to us everyday. Tant qu'il y a de la vie, il y a de l'espoir."

Lucien looked at the lagoon blue eyes. They reminded him of Perle's.

"As long as we live, there is hope." He translated himself.

"You think so?" Mundy asked.

"I am sure of it. If I could cut my hair, shave my unkempt beard, put on the suit and tie again, the mask, all that after ten years off; if I now manage to wear any other colours than black and grey, if I accept to work with you, then surely there is hope and I am pulling myself out of La Solitude's grip. But look at yourself, Bushman, I am sure you could see the same progression."

Mundy frowned.

"Here you are, with someone on your passenger's seat in your van, talking to this mysterious man in a mask that you don't even know the face or the name of, you even go to the Queen Victoria and watch concerts while enjoying fine food, all that while wearing a suit and tie! Would the M from five years ago ever think of doing that? Non, of course not. Yet here you are." Lucien said and Mundy's jaw dropped as he started to realise it all.

"You are not even realising it, but you are healing already."

Mundy blushed. His blood was boiling with energy as he practically buzzed on his seat. He was healing!

"I'm… Am I?" He asked.

"Oui, you are."

"Jesus, I never saw things this way before…"

"Because you have always been scared." Lucien answered.

"Of what?"

"Looking inside you."

"Why?" Mundy asked.

"Because of the risk. Think, Bushman. If you let yourself look inside here," Lucien poked Mundy's polo shirt on his chest. "Then, you take the risk of finding things that you don't want to find."

Mundy blushed.

"Guess you're right." He sighed. "But you… You're really like Lulu."

"How so?"

"You manage to put words on stuff I knew was somewhere in me, but never managed to really say."

Lucien gave him a grin that was almost sweet.

"Contrary to you, I asked myself all those questions before you. I knew the risks and I took them."

"What did you find then, in there?" Mundy poked the Frenchman's jacket on his chest like he had done a few seconds before.

"Does it matter?"

Mundy sighed. He now knew that whenever L didn't want to talk about something, he would just say "Does it matter?".

"A bit. But if you don't wanna talk about it, it's fine." He sent a sweet smile back at L. "Although, uh… Thanks."

"What for?" Lucien raised a curious eyebrows.

"I like chatting about those things. And I never really had anyone to do that with before. To be honest, that's also a reason why I quite like Lulu, he accepted to talk with me about that."

"Whenever you want, Bushman."

Their eyes met with a smile on both parts.

"But right now, let us wait for Richard to make the suits." Lucien exited the van.

"When is the party?"

Lucien looked through the van's open window.

"In a week so we have time, enjoy your holidays."

"You too, Spook."

They nodded to each other and Lucien turned to get to his motorcycle.

"L?"

Lucien turned.

"Uh, enjoy your time with Pearl, eh?"

The Frenchman smiled.

"That's all I hope for." He answered.

#tf2 spy #tf2 sniper #sniperspy #SBT

8 notes · View notes

who-is-olivia · 5 years

Text

Track 4. Two Ghosts

Harry Styles x OC x Taylor Swift

Harry reunites with Olivia after he settles in a relationship with Taylor Swift. [4.5k]

Genre: angst, fluff

Warnings: substance abuse, mentions of panic attacks, mental health struggles, infidelity

January 2013

“I just left the keys with Nialler, mine and El’s, tomorrow we’ll come pick up the rest of my clothes” Louis explains over the phone while Harry looks at the New York landscape through snowy windows.

After the successful tour, there was no more financial reason to share a flat with Lou, and before that there was not a good healthy climate to share it either. He felt terrible seeing him every day after they shared such intimate moments. They’re still close friends, just not as much as they used to be, and it hurts. He misses the days when they would play video games on the couch and diss each other’s clothing, he misses the companionship they shared. In fact, looking back to this time last year, there’s a lot of things he misses. His anonymity, his mum’s house, Oli...

Boy, does he miss Oli.

Few months after her first big hit debuted, launching her album and promoting their tour, she became too stressed. She felt the hate and the press lurking around her like vultures, she cried about small things, she smoked three packs a day, she became aloof and apathetic. One day, it was all too much.

Since she decided to live with Frank her mother has shut her out, they haven’t been on speaking terms. Right after the tour, when her band started racing up the charts, a tabloid wrote an article with her mum spilling all of her life story. Oli’s always been very secretive about her family history, Harry knew the basics but she seldom talked about it. So one day she woke up and everybody, in the whole world, knew and judged her for it.

Looking out the window, the New York landscape disappears and he’s back in her hotel room holding her by the shoulders, her eyes puffy and vague, her tear-soaked face was catatonic. She had been kneeling on the living room unable to move or talk for hours and it scared him. She was absolutely broken, and no amount of love declamations and tears were enough to bring her out of that loop.

Harry took her to a mental institution that day and never saw her again, all he heard from Frank was that she went back home to make peace with her mother. That was back in September, now it’s January and he still haven’t heard from her, so he’s trying to move on. He’s been hanging out with Taylor, she’s good company – and, most importantly, a good distraction. They’re set to travel tomorrow and enjoy some well deserved vacation but he hasn’t packed swimsuits or anything, so he’s going out to buy some after he’s done with Lou.

“It’s alright mate”

“Okay, I’d hand it to you in person but I was thinking about taking El to meet my mum”

“Wow, that’s huge!” he smiles sadly, he never got to introduce Oli to his mum. Bet they’d get along just fine. “You think you’ll be back in time for rehearsals?”

“Can’t miss that, Simon’d just kick my arse”

He chuckles, “Right, see ya then”

“See ya” they both hang up.

Although Taylor offered to host him at her private loft in Chelsea, Harry opted to book a hotel room on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, next to where Olivia used to live. So, when he goes out for a morning jog, he always walks past her building and the pub where she used to work. This morning, he packs up to go shopping and leaves the hotel, reaching a point where, if he makes a turn, he’ll reach the tube and go shopping right away, if he goes forward he’ll pass in front of Uncle Jim’s Pub, but he’ll have to walk another twenty minutes before he finds another station.

It’s a pointless ritual, going over to Uncle Jim’s. She’s never there. But he can’t help that fear in his guts of missing an hour on the day where she might just be. So, despite all logic, he goes forward.

He soldiers through the cold morning stomping over melted snow until he passes over the pub. He looks through the window and this time spots something odd, or rather, someone: a man in a dress sitting over the bar.

He comes closer, rubbing the glass to see better. He spots Jim sitting on one of the tables, his signature cane beside him. They’re both looking at the same spot on stage but he can’t quite see it. Slowly, he opens the door and immediately hears the soft piano tiles playing something harmoniously crude but melodically so, so sweet.

There she is, beautifully onstage playing the piano forte, her back perfectly straight, her signature braids are gone, her hair a small afro surrounding tanned cheeks. She looks sober and... peaceful, all her nervous agitation is gone, she looks healthy.

He hides behind the bar, bumping into the portraits on the wall: Uncle Jim with Brian May and David Bowie, Oli and Frank sitting on Elton John’s knees, Paul McCartney watching her play the piano. He remembers Oli talking about uncle David and uncle Paul but he never saw it like this, her sweet toothless smile alongside some of the biggest rockstars in the world. She has a lot to live up to, maybe he didn’t realise that. He didn’t realise a lot of things.

For a while, Oli was just the thrill of the chase, someone untouchable who graced him with her affection. But then they went on tour and suddenly she wasn’t just a fling, she was a friend who stood at the backstage every single show, who talked to him until late hours on the tour bus, she shared her most vulnerable side and he loved it, he loved her. Those stolen kisses and quick fucks became meaningful, they became friends then they became lovers. That’s why it was so hard to watch her crumble.

The portrait he bumps smashes on the ground making them all turn, including Olivia.

It’s like she’s seen a ghost. And so has he.

“Harry” she gasps, getting up from the stool. Jim and Frank both turn toward him with big salutary gestures.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean-“

“Oh, don’t worry! How’ve you been? It’s been a while!” Jim nods, unable to get up.

“Jim, we better give ‘em some room” Frank, always the expert on reading the room.

“No, no, no need, we’re going outside” she indicates for him to follow her out the door. Before she walks out she notices Frank’s weird looks, she sends one back signaling it’s alright in their own mental language and pushes Harry out the door.

Harry is still appalled, trying to make sense of things while his eyes are assaulted by the winter morning’s sun. She pulls the door until it’s shut and, when she turns to leave, she finds herself being cornered against the glass by Harry. She stumbles back before being welcomed into his embrace.

He sighs in relief, feeling her hair tickling his cheek as it used to do. He can’t help but smile at the sensation of her body pressed against his and her gentle hands making their way to his back. “I missed you so much”

“I missed you too” she sighs through a smile. “I’m so sorry for the silence”

“I understand” he kisses the top of her head, “how’re you feeling?”

“Fulfilled, relieved... it’s like there’s a huge weight off my shoulders” she steps to his right, “You’re heading this way?”

“I- I don’t know”

“Jesus, Harry, let’s just walk” she mocks, “How are the boys?”

“They’re fine, Zayn and Perrie just moved in together”

“Nice” she swallows dryly, hadn’t she gone away maybe she and Harry would be living together.

“Niall is going out with someone, he won’t tell us who but we know” he chuckles, “we’re making bets on it, wanna join?”

“Sure” she replies, still thoughtful.

Noticing her discomfort, he hurriedly switches the subject, “I guess things with your mum were alright”

“It was fine, we just needed some quality time to put our thoughts in order. And Frank helped a lot, you know, getting her to know him made all the difference” she smiles earnestly, “He’s the fucking best, I couldn’t have done it without him”

“Blimey...”

“What?”

“I just... nothing, it’s silly”

“You’re silly all the time, tell me!” she taunts him with a smile.

“I already know what you’re going to say” he warns, “but sometimes I wish you were talking about me” he shrugs his shoulders.

“You’re such a-“

“-jelly baby, yeah I know!” she laughs, a laugh he was dying to hear.

“- such a jelly baby”

“Oli” he cuts that sweet sound, “I need to know... did you ever get to hear what I said to you the day you passed out?”

“No... sorry Haz, I just zoned out. What was it?”

“No, it’s nothing”

“What? Why are you so secretive today?” she continues to taunt.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t expect to meet a lot of people today, least of all you...” a thought crosses his mind, cutting his speech, “When did you arrive?”

“Just this morning, I got a night flight from Rio-“

“Were you going to call me? After all that happened?”

Olivia ponders for a moment, afraid of giving him an honest answer. He’s always been sincere, even if it hurt her, now it’s time to return the favour: “I don’t think so, Haz... It’s not because I don’t care about you or anything like that, it’s just...” she looks for the words but this time they’re hard to uncover, “I’m feeling fine now, but I can’t forget the fright I gave you. I don’t remember what you said or what was actually going on but I have a clear image of you just” she crosses her arms over her collarbones, “holding me so hard I almost choked, I can’t imagine how that felt to you... and I don’t want to put you through that again. I’m fine now but I don’t know how I’m gonna be tomorrow, I still feel the old me lurking just around the corner. Feeling fine is new territory to me, but I don’t know how you fit into this”

He nods, “Let me know when you do?”

She grins, “Of course! Yes, of course!”

And then she does it again, hugs him like she used to, pressing her whole body against him and nestling her head on the crook of her neck. He wants to turn her and kiss her so bad, but he can’t do it. That’s what they used to be, not who they are.

“I better get back, Frank must be losing his shit... how long you’ll be around?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow, me and... hm... Taylor”

“Taylor?” she frowns. Fuck.

For all the tabloids and gossip websites, she has to hear it from him. Why can’t she just use her phone like a normal human being and read the fucking news? “Taylor Swift? We’ve been hanging out...”

“Oh...” she gasps in surprise.

“You didn’t say anything, I assumed-“

“No, it’s alright” her words don’t align with her face, “It’s ok Harry, really”

“You don’t seem ok”

“I’m just surprised, that’s all” she compensates with an awkward smile, “I’m happy for you”

“Thanks” he replies with a sour taste, he can feel when they’re not being honest to each other, in this cases cordiality is worse than just lying. Lying just hides something, cordiality shoves the thing in your face and acts like it’s not there.

“Oh, just in case I don’t get to see you anytime soon” she reaches into her sleeves and takes a colourful bracelet, “just a little souvenir from Rio, I was going to keep it in my bag but I thought I’d lose it”

“Thanks Oli, that’s lovely” he watches as she ties it around his wrist.

“Well it was great to see you, have a nice trip tomorrow!” she pecks his cheek and leaves.

Just as she came, she went away. Not a moment with Oli ever feels wasted but they sure do feel short. Without any options, Harry goes on with his day chores which now include buying swim gear for a trip he doesn’t want to make anymore.

He lifelessly picks random trunks and floral shirts, taking fewer than he’ll actually need then takes a cab to Taylor’s place. When he arrives the Chelsea flat, she’s reading a book on the couch, her perfect blond hair on a ponytail.

“Hey, stranger!” she looks over the backboard.

“Morning!” he comes over and kisses her temple, but she calls him back with a finger and presses her lips against his. “What’re you up to?”

“Not much, just finishing this” she shows him a copy of The Hunger Games, “I’m loving it. Everything’s already packed, I guess we’ll just wait around”

“I could use a nap, jet lag is driving me mad” he scoots over the couch and pulls himself a pillow, laying his head over Taylor’s lap. She rests her book over his chest while mindlessly playing with his fingers. While she’s distracted, he notices something about her face: even without any makeup, Taylor’s lips are still tinted red, which contrast beautifully with her stark blue eyes. Despite having a beauty of her own, she reminds him so much of Lou. For the second time today, he feels an uncomfortable void on his guts after remembering fondly someone he loved.

He turns his gaze away, it hurts so bad to be haunted by these people who feel so close and vivid but at the same time feel like a distant memory, a ghost. He talked to Louis on the phone, he just saw Olivia on the flesh, Taylor is right in front of him caressing his hand but they feel so foreign. Maybe they’ve changed a lot ever since that idealised moment when they fell in love, maybe Harry’s the one who’s changed.

“Hey” she whispers, “what’s going on in your head?”

“Just thinking... do you still talk to the people you used to date?”

She chuckles at he spontaneous question, “Not on purpose, I always bump into them at these big events and of course everybody knows, so I have to be polite. If I even blink wrong the whole world will be like: Taylor Swift is just a bitter old hag”

“Come on, now”

“It’s true! If I talk to them, I’m fake, if I don’t talk to them, I’m rude, there’s no winning for us girls. You guys can do whatever you want!” she pokes his side, “If you see your ex and talk to them you’re oh, so polite and considerate, if you don’t talk you’re really discrete-“

“I get it” he nods in agreement. “But that’s not what I meant, it’s like... can you still be friends with people you used to be more than friends?”

“You and your weird questions” she mocks him lightly before sighing and finally answering: “It’s weird being friendly with someone you shared so much intimacy with”

“Yeah” he nods.

“ Just seeing them reminds me of something that I used to feel but I can’t talk about it, so I always end up tiptoeing around it and I... I hate it. I’m usually very straightforward but in these tight corners I never say what I really mean”

He nods silently. If he could see Oli again, what would he say? There was so much he wanted to say, in fact he already said it but she wasn’t able to listen. It’s so frustrating...

Taylor and him spend the day together lounging around, making out and napping. At some point they nap in a hammock, her body cuddled against his while the night falls outside. She sleeps very quietly while he doesn’t sleep at all, just stare at his new bracelet and ponders upon the last words Oli said today: ‘just in case I don’t get to see you anytime soon’. In a few weeks he’ll go on tour, her band split and they have no projects mapped out, when will they actually see each other again? On tour, they spent every day together except the ones when they’d be tired of each other and just spent the day apart. It’s so upsetting not knowing when he’ll see her again, that feeling just turns to a small pit of fear in his heart. What if his story with Oli is already over? It can’t be, he still has so much he wants to do, so many places to take her.

But coming back from his daydream he finds himself laying with another girl. Shouldn’t he be planning things with her? For fuck’s sake, they’re about to take a romantic trip together! Still, looking ahead to his future, he can see nobody but Olivia. She’s left such a gap in his present and in his future he can’t stand the possibility of not taking a chance.

Trying his best not to disturb her, Harry gets up from the hammock and walks to the kitchen. The fridge light washes the room white as he finds the rest of the wine bottle, there’s just two gulps left so he decides to take the whole thing. When he closes the fridge, surprisingly the room doesn’t go dark as the moon shines furiously through the windows. Another memory hits him: when he and Oli hid on the roof of their hotel in Phoenix. She took a bottle of rosé and a few blankets, cuddling with him while trying to remove the cork. She said “I hope you like a good rosé, I hate red wine”, and ever since then he lost the habit of drinking red wine... until today.

As if to defy her memory he drinks the wine anyway but somehow the taste feels repugnant. Even now, she still haunts him. He looks over to Taylor and an enormous guilt befalls him. She is incredible, a good company, but his heart still beats for somebody else. He hits his head against the fridge in shame but it won’t change how he feels... so he decides to seek counselling.

He calls Zayn at least three times but not even a friend in need can dissuade him from deep slumber. So, he heads to the balcony and calls his second option, the one he wants to avoid but can’t anyways: “Hey curly, what’s going on? It’s a bit late here”

“I know Lou, I’m so sorry I just couldn’t help it”

“It’s alright, I’m up already. What’s going on?”

“I saw Oli today, she’s back in New York” he blurts at once, looking back at the balcony door to make sure Taylor’s still asleep.

“That’s great man, cheers-“

“Yeah, except I’m with Taylor now and I can’t stop thinking about Oli”

The line goes quiet for a moment. “Oh... that’s bad”

“I don’t know what to do, mate”

“Harry... I should tell you to stay with Taylor, you know, ‘cause she’s a nice gal and she helped you out of a tough place, but...” he smiles sadly, “I know if I tell you this is the right thing to do you’ll do it, even if it hurts you”

Harry snorts, “I probably would”

“Exactly, so I can’t tell you that. Listen mate, I... I fucking adore you, you’re one of my best mates and I know what happened between us hurt you”

“It’s alright now, Lou”

“I know it is, but I don’t want to be that wanker to tell you ‘just forget your feelings and do what you have to do’, you know?”

He chuckles, “Sure mate”

“See? So, in my humble opinion, you should go for Oli. I know you’re crazy ‘bout that lass... and, you know, we won’t get everything we want in life, specially us if we keep the band thing going. The least you can do is have fun with someone you love”

“Thanks, Lou”

“Anytime curly... ‘though if you can call a bit earlier”

“Right, right... bye mate”

Olivia tosses and turns on her bed. The flat is so quiet when Frank’s not home, it’s unnerving, specially when she’s emotionally wavering. She gets up and away from her tormented thoughts and searches for one of her vinyls, she could do with a bit of music to drown it all out. She finds ‘Rumors’ from Fleetwood Mack and places it on the speaker, swinging to the melody of the first track and letting the tune fill her ears. She starts to assemble a cigarette while keeping a distant eye on her phone, she’s been trying to avoid it ever since the breakdown but seeing Harry today was very triggering. A spark of curiosity hits her but she refrains, last time she spent too much time on her phone she ended up in a psychiatric hospital.

She finishes rolling her cigarette and lights it, getting up and singing along. It’s a good song, but not good enough to distract her from the temptation of her phone.

“Fuck it” she reaches the phone and searches for Twitter. Turns out Frank deleted it so she has to download it again, letting the anxiety take her reins as nervous tears cloud her view. Sighing in frustration, she logs in her secret account and searches for Taylor and Harry. “So stupid, so fucking stupid” she puts it down.

Oli takes a long drag, holds it for a while then let go, letting one single tear fall down in self pity. Unnerved, she takes the phone back. She looks at the search results: Harry and Taylor walking down Central Park with Baby Lux, kissing after her midnight show in Times Square, talking at a restaurant. And of course, where there is a new girlfriend there will be comparisons:

@directionfever: Thank god he’s moving on from his drug dealer.

@bluejayway: my boy Harry looking like a prince with that new chick, he finally getting what he deserves

@styyles_xo: That’s the smile of someone who ain’t playing nurse anymore and’s finally living <3

@larryxx: taylor aint all that but at least harry is free from that fucking pr relationship

Oh yes, the PR argument. Of course Harry and Olivia were arranged by a group of public relations managers in order to promote her career, as if she couldn’t possibly fall in love with him just for the sake of it. And boy did she fall graciously in love with him. It felt so strange seeing him this morning and just not squeeze his cheeks and give him a kiss, she didn’t even feel like the same person. Now he’s going away and all she wants is to fuck all logic and reason and just get him back like nothing ever happened. But of course, everything happened. She made a choice to stay away after she came back, now she has to deal with the most uncomfortable consequences

Before she can fall deeper into that self-doubt abyss, there are knocks on the door. “Frank? Did you forget the keys?” she asks wiping her tears.

She opens it to find Harry.

“Haz?” all coherent thoughts evade her, “W-What’re you doing here, it’s past midnight already-“

“Did you, hm... did you see the moon?” she frowns at him but not completely dismissive, “It looks just like that night... bloody hell Oli, do you remember that night? On the roof?”

“Yes, I remember” she chuckles.

“If I close my eyes I can see it clear as day, I remember every single day I spent with you clear as day, it’s so clear I can almost touch it, love” he sighs shyly.

“Harry...” she gasps.

“The first night on the bus! Do you remember it?”

“Harry I had a breakdown, not amnesia!” she laughs before noticing the typical agitation on her hallway and the neighbors paying attention to their exchange, “Shit, come on in”

“What I’m trying to say, the best way I can is... I have this very vivid memory of you and I thought that’s all I’d ever have. But when I saw you this morning... I thought we still had a chance” he reaches out for her, before slowly recoiling at her lack of response, sitting at the couch’s arm rest. “Please say something?”

She quirks her head, “Is that Frank’s shirt?”

He looks down at the plain white t-shirt and frowns, “This?”

“The one he gave to me and then I gave it to you?”

“Hm... yeah, did you hear-“

“I did” she smiles shortly, “I just don’t know what to say, I mean I was just here bawling my eyes out thinking I’d never get to see you again and all of a sudden you’re here saying all these things!” her voice cracks. She stops, takes a deep breath and continues: “I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say”

“You could say: ‘I’m really, really in love with you and I want to try again’” he mimics her lower pitched-voice while pulling her closer by the hem of her shirt. She giggles at his little tantrum, pacing closer until his chin rests between her breasts. Without another word, she strokes his curly locks of hair and holds him close agains her bosom. He nuzzles a straight line from her sternum to her collarbone, feeling just a tinge of her cologne. Every crawling touch feels like he’s desperately trying to remember how it feels to have her heartbeat singing in his ear.

He pulls her shirt collar down and the loose fabric slides revealing a bit more of skin and a couple more tattoos. He runs his lips over it, feeling the sweet taste of her skin just as it used to be. Looking up, he sees her eyes lightly shut, her parted lips lit by the moonlight that invades the living room. He remembers when having her like this was enough, when he felt truly alive. Olivia is still everything he really needs, the rest is the rest. She’s not a ghost, she’s not a reverie, she looks, sounds, tastes, smells and feels so real to him, it’s impossible to desire any other incarnation of her other then the very present one.

“Haz” she sighs in a whimper, pushing him away a bit. She tries but she can’t escape his looming eyes. “I know I have no right to ask anything from you... “ her courage suddenly evades her, “but I don’t want you to go”

He cups her cheeks in a small comforting gesture, “I won’t go anywhere”

“What about Taylor? She must be so upset with me”

“Believe me, you’re not the one she’s upset with, it’s ok” he dismisses it, leaning in to kiss her lips passionately. “I’m right where I want to be” she smiles and kisses him back.

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investmart007 · 6 years

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Professional wrestling great Bruno Sammartino dies at 82

New Post has been published on https://goo.gl/X3nya3

Professional wrestling great Bruno Sammartino dies at 82

April 18, 2018 (AP)(STL.News) —He was professional wrestling’s ultimate good guy. The son of Italian immigrants, Bruno Sammartino fled the Nazis as a child and built a career beating a string of bad guys that thrilled fans and made him reign as the conscientious champ for more than a decade.

Before the flash of The Hulkster, the electricity of The Rock and the foul-mouth of Stone Cold, all Sammartino required to become wrestling’s biggest box office draw was a pair of tights, boots and an honest promo that made fans believe in the most illegitimate of sports.

Sammartino, professional wrestling’s “Living Legend” and one of its longest-reigning champions, has died. He was 82.

“One of the finest men I knew, in life and in business,” WWE chairman Vince McMahon said . “Bruno Sammartino proved that hard work can overcome even the most difficult of circumstances. He will be missed.”

Family friend and former wrestling announcer Christopher Cruise said Sammartino died Wednesday morning and had been hospitalized for two months.

The WWE opened a live event Wednesday night with a 10-bell salute for Sammartino.

Sammartino’s name on the marquee about guaranteed a squared circle sellout in the 1960s and 1970s and he held the World Wide Wrestling Federation championship for more than 11 years (4,040 days) over two title runs.

Sammartino’s Italian heritage, brute strength and good-guy charisma helped make him an instant star in the northeast. He had rivalries with Killer Kowalski, Gorilla Monsoon and George “The Animal” Steele during his title runs and later wrestled famous grudge matches at Shea Stadium against Pedro Morales, Stan Hansen and Larry Zbyszko.

“Bruno came along in the ’60s and he reflected what was going on in terms of the American Dream story,” Zbyszko told The Associated Press. “Poor, starving immigrant kid who escaped Nazis. His mother was shot over the mountains and he came to this country starving and achieved the American Dream. He became the beloved heavyweight champion of the world. People saw that, they felt that. He was a real guy. Everybody believed in him.”

He was born in Italy and was a child when his family immigrated to Pittsburgh, where he became a champion power lifter and workout fanatic before learning the ropes of pro wrestling.

Sammartino defeated Buddy Rogers in just 48 seconds to become the second-ever WWE champion in front of nearly 20,000 fans on May 17, 1963, at the old Madison Square Garden . He held the title until 1971 and his second reign began in 1973 with a win over Stan Stasiak. That one lasted until he was pinned by “Superstar” Billy Graham in 1977.

Zbyszko, a WWE Hall of Famer, was billed as Sammartino’s protege until he turned on him during a famous televised match. Zbyszko got a quick lesson on how much fans loved their Legend when he bloodied Sammartino with a series of chair shots to the head.

“I was getting my car smashed, I had to hide in trunks,” Zbyszko said. “I was going down the highway in a new Cadillac with the windows smashed, the mirrors hanging, the lights are out. It was a different time, a different day. My god, the riots.”

They became engaged in a bitter feud that was capped by a steel cage match at Shea in 1980.

Sammartino escaped the cage a winner.

“People hated me for 20 years after that match,” Zbyszko said. “Everything I learned was from Bruno. He was my mentor.”

Sammartino and Hulk Hogan — the biggest long-term money-making draws in WWE history — tagged together in the “Legend’s” final match. He was in his son David’s corner for a bout at the first WrestleMania in 1985 and competed in a battle royal won by Andre the Giant at the second WrestleMania in 1986.

Sammartino became a broadcaster on WWE’s weekend morning shows before his frustration over the company’s direction into campier storylines and an outrage over the drug culture he said had permeated the industry led to a bitter, two-decade split with McMahon. He eventually made peace with WWE and accepted his induction into the Hall of Fame in 2013 . He was inducted by Arnold Schwarzenegger .

WWE said Sammartino sold out Madison Square Garden , known as the mecca of professional wrestling, hundreds times over his career. Sammartino suffered a broken neck when he was dropped on his head by Hansen in 1976 at the Garden.

Sammartino’s family fled a Nazi invasion of his village in Italy and he hid with his mother in a mountain during the German occupation. They eventually joined his father in Pittsburgh in 1950.

Bullied because he spoke little English, Sammartino, who had suffered from rheumatic fever in childhood, dedicated himself to bodybuilding and eventually authored “The Bruno Course of Bodybuilding.” The WWE said he once bench-pressed 569 pounds in 1959 which was noticed by promoter Vincent J. McMahon.

Paul Levesque, a top WWE executive better known in the ring as Triple H, helped bring Sammartino back into the fold.

“Devastated to hear the passing of a true icon, legend, great, honest and wonderful man… A true friend…and one of the toughest people I’ve ever met,” Levesque tweeted .

Olympic gold medalist and WWE star Kurt Angle, a Pittsburgh native, called Sammartino “a hometown hero ” who carried himself with dignity and was courteous to fans.

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto said Sammartino was one of the city’s greatest ambassadors. Sammartino’s name joined Dan Marino and Andy Warhol on two signs welcoming people to South Oakland.

“Through his uncommon strength and surprising grace he embodied the spirit of Pittsburgh on the world stage,” Peduto said. “Some of the fondest memories of my childhood are of sitting in the basement with my grandfather on Saturday mornings and watching Bruno wrestle.”

By DAN GELSTON by Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC (U.S)

#Bruno Sammartino #Professional wrestling great Bruno Sammartino dies #The son of Italian immigrants #WWE chairman

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itsiotrecords-blog · 7 years

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For all us movie lovers out there, there is nothing better than a surprising plot twist. As we settle down to watch a great movie which we think is going along in a certain direction, then bam! The movie completely changes and everything we thought was happening is very different. Heroes become the villains, people who are seemingly alive are in fact dead, or these people and characters don’t even exist at all. Unfortunately, plot twists have become so common in movies these days that, more often than not, a shocking or surprise ending is tacked onto a movie just to make it a bit more interesting. This makes the movie seem false and even overly complicates things in some cases, which is not the point of a plot twist. A plot twist should be a subtle undertone to a movie and the revelation at the end should have us talking about it with excitement for weeks afterwards. Some movies get it right and now we look at 15 movie plot twist that we all still talk about to this day. Warning: If you haven’t seen any of these movies, this article contains huge spoilers.

#1 Now You See Me The first entry delves into the realm of magic and illusions. Now You See Me follows an FBI agent, played by Mark Ruffalo, who is on the hunt for four magicians who pull off daring bank heists in front of live audiences. The four magicians, led by Jesse Eisenberg, have been put together by a mysterious master magician who wants to get back at a rich insurance tycoon, played by Michael Caine. The magicians go about taking the tyrant’s money as the FBI get closer and closer to them until it looks like the magicians will be caught. The twist in this movie is that the mysterious magician that put these guys together is Ruffalo’s FBI agent. He had been pulling the strings all along, both magicians and FBI agents. And his reason was for revenge.

#2 Seven When you have Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, and Kevin Spacey in a movie together, you know it’s going to be good. Seven definitely didn’t disappoint us. When a serial killer starts killing people that match the seven deadly sins, two detectives work together to try and stop him before he kills again. After coming close to catching the killer, they realize that there are still two more murders left in order for the killer to finish his deadly sins. With a few leads, the detectives are getting close, but to their surprise, the killer hands himself in to the police. But he has a request: the detectives have to take him to a certain place and then he will confess to everything. When they get to this place, a delivery driver drops off a package. The twist for this movie is that, inside the box, is the head of Pitt’s wife. The last two sins are of wrath and envy. The killer is envious of Pitt’s character and the killer wants him to shoot him in order to be wrath. Once he finds out his wife was also pregnant, Pitt blows the killer away and completes the sins.

#3 Psycho Next, we come to a classic piece of movie horror history in the form of Psycho. When a young woman is on the run for embezzling money from her boss, she comes across a hotel and decides to hide out. There she meets Norman Bates, who runs the hotel with his mother. Then comes that infamous shower scene in which the woman is killed by Norman’s mother. Following this, Norman starts to lose control as he can’t contain his mother and her crazy actions. Most people know the twist to this movie, even if they’ve never seen it. Norman Bates’ mother is long dead, in fact he killed her years ago. But he keeps her body in his room in a wheelchair and takes on her personality in some seriously messed up multiple personality disorder episodes. This movie has become synonymous with shocking twists and paved the way for many horror movies to do similar twists.

#4 The Others Our next entry is a clever play on the traditional haunted house ghost story. The Others sees Grace, played by Nicole Kidman, become a recluse in the aftermath of World War II. Along with her children, who are severely photosensitive and can’t go outside at all, they stay in their house and live out a quiet life. That is until some servants turn up and then some strange and spooky things start to happen. Grace is convinced there are things living in the house which she refers to as “The Others.” To top things off, Grace’s dead husband suddenly returns. With all the strange things happening, Grace is pushed right to the edge. It turns out that Grace and her kids are “The Others” and the spooky goings on are new tenants moving into her house. The war and loss of her husband were too much for Grace so she smothered her children and then killed herself a long time ago.

#5 Planet Of The Apes (1968) The original, and many will say the best, version of The Planet Of The Apes is our next entry. As a group of astronauts, led by Charlton Heston, awake from a hibernated sleep, they discover they are on a different planet. What’s more interesting is that the planet doesn’t seem to be able to support life, but they’re wrong as Heston get’s captured by Apes, the dominant species of this planet. He’s put on trial, tortured, and treated like an animal until he escapes. Once he escapes he’s desperate to learn about where he is and tries to find a way home. While running along the beach, Heston discovers the ruins of The Statue of Liberty and realizes that he is in fact on Earth, but just in the future. Mankind had destroyed everything a long time ago with a nuclear war and the apes are in charge now. This movie spawned several sequels, TV shows, and reboots but this movie, and its twist, is still the best.

#6 Angel Heart Mickey Rourke plays a private detective, Harry Angel, who is hired to track down a missing New Orleans musician named Johnny Favorite. His employer is a strange man known as Louis Cypher, yes, we know how obvious that name is in hindsight, but at the time we didn’t make the connection! Cypher, played by Robert De Niro, drops a lot of clues to Angel about where he should start looking. Angel uncovers all sorts of crazy things and also, all the people that have information, keep showing up dead. It turns out that Louis Cypher is the Devil and Harry Angel is Johnny Favorite. Favorite sold his soul to the devil but then stole the identity of Angel in order to hide from the Devil but now the Devil is here to collect what is his. It also turns out that Angel/Favorite killed all those people, had sex with his daughter, but then forgot about it.

#7 The Sting Following on from the huge success of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Robert Redford and Paul Newman teamed up once again to give us this classic tale of conmen. Set during the depression era, Redford and Newman play conmen who go after a crime lord and try to take his money. They set up a scam which involves rigging the outcome of horse racing, which in those days was announced over the radio. However, they get caught out. The crime boss isn’t happy and the cops come knocking on the door. Redford’s character is forced to betray his friends to the police, which Newman doesn’t like. A big shoot out occurs in which Newman is shot dead and the bad guys escape scot free. From the very outset of this movie, twist and turns, bluffs and misdirections are everywhere. The final showdown has all been faked in order for the bad guys to think that they are dead. So no one really betrayed anyone, everyone’s alive and they get to keep all the money without any repercussions.

#8 Primal Fear Defense Attorney Martin Vail, played by Richard Gere, is hired to defend an altar boy, Aaron Stampler played by Edward Norton, who is being tried for murdering an Archbishop. During their meetings, Vale is convinced that Stampler is innocent, that is until a tape surfaces that show’s the Archbishop forcing Stampler to perform certain sexual acts. When Vale confronts Stampler with this evidence it’s clear that Stampler has a split personality and an angry and violent version of himself, Roy, comes out and confesses to the murder. The case goes to trial and the judge finds Stampler Not Guilty for reasons of insanity. At the end of the movie, Vale visits Stampler in a hospital to inform him that he’s due for release. Stampler then tells Vale that he made the story up and he has no split personality and he killed the archbishop in cold blood. Vale then asks “There was no Roy?” To which Stampler replies “There was no Aaron.”

#9 Shutter Island A dark and gothic tale with our next entry, Shutter Island sees Detective Daniels, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, go to a remote island that is a prison for the mentally and criminally insane in order to find a missing woman that has killed her children. Once Daniels is inside the prison, other patients start to go missing and something just doesn’t seem right to him. He soon stumbles upon conspiracy after conspiracy which results in him finding a lighthouse in which lobotomies are carried out on the patients. The twist in this movie is that Daniels is actually a patient in the institute. He had been put there when he killed his wife, he killed her because she killed their children. Daniels being a detective was all a charade so the doctors could see what he does and if he could begin to accept what he has done. It turns out that he can’t and he heads off to the lighthouse.

#10 Empire Strikes Back The second movie in the original Star Wars trilogy saw Luke Skywalker go off to find Jedi master Yoda in hopes that he will train him to be a real Jedi. Han Solo and Princess Leia head off for the city in the clouds. However, it’s a trap for Luke and Han and Leia are held prisoner. While training, Luke has a vision that his friends are in trouble and rushes off to save them which leads to the ultimate showdown between Luke and Darth Vader. While they are fighting, Luke loses one of his hands and it looks like the end for Luke Skywalker. But the ultimate movie twist is about to come as Darth Vader confess to Luke that he is in fact his father. He wants Luke to join him on the dark side and rule the galaxy. Luke can’t take it any more and dives off the hanger and into a shaft, only to be rescued by Han.

#11 The Crying Game The Crying Game focuses on members of the IRA and their fight against the British. IRA foot soldier Fergus captures a British soldier, Jody, and is ordered to kill him if he doesn’t meet the demands of the IRA. Fergus however can’t go through with the killing and actually starts to befriend Jody. Jody confesses that he has a person in his life that he loves, Dil, and if anything happens to him, he makes Fergus promise that he will find her and tell her that Jody is dead. Jody dies by accident and true to his word, Fergus tracks down Dil but as soon as he meets her he falls in love and wants to leave the IRA. The twist in this movie is a big one, no pun intended, and had us all open mouthed with shock. The twist in this movie actually comes early and the rest of the movie deals with it. So what’s the twist? Dil is actually a man.

#12 The Sixth Sense “I see dead people.” The movie that made director M. Night Shyamalan a star, The Sixth Sense followed a child psychologist as he takes on a new patient: a young boy that can, not only see dead people, but these dead people haunt him as they don’t realize they are dead. The two become close as he tries to help the young boy through what he feels is a psychological breakdown. The movie is full of subtle shocks and scares and draws us in to the ultimate conclusion. Considering that Bruce Willis’ character was shot in the very first scene of this movie, the ending still had everyone talking about it for months, and years, after. The twist with this movie is that Willis has been dead for the entire movie.

#13 Fight Club First rule of fight club: No one talks about fight club! An unhappy office worker, played by Edward Norton, becomes addicted to support group meetings for terminal patients. Soon he meets a girl, Marla, and then Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt. The three of them become close, and with Durden in particular, he builds a close friendship. The two of them form an underground Fight Club in which men basically beat the crap out of each other. Durden then turns the club into a terrorist organization before he disappears. We all know the twist in this one: there is no Tyler Durden and he is in fact a figment of Norton’s imagination and broken mind. Another one for the multiple personality twist. But it’s a great twist.

#14 Momento Momento focuses on Leonard, played by Guy Pearce, as he tries to track down the people that killed his wife. Unfortunately for him, the attack on his wife was so severe that he lost his memory and can’t form new ones. Because of this, the movie actually runs backwards with each scene being the one after the next rather than the one before. It does make sense when you watch it, honestly. So with the help of a cop, Leonard manages to track down his killer and take his revenge. Because of the way this movie is shot and the story is told, there are many twists and turns but the biggest reveal is at the end. It turns out that his cop friend has been using his memory loss as an excuse to take out a load of bad guys and Leonard was actually the one who killed his diabetic wife.

#15 The Usual Suspects The number one entry on our list is one of the best movies ever made with arguably the greatest plot twist of any movie. The Usual Suspects sees a group of criminals that are constantly hounded by the police and pulled in for line ups. On one such line up, the gang get together and decide to do a job for the master criminal, and illusive, Keyser Soze. However, the heist goes wrong and Kevin Spacey’s character Kint, the dimwitted crook with a limp, gets called in for questioning. He tells the officers the story of what happened and who was to blame and then leaves the police station. The twist here is the most famous twist in any movie as the officer who questioned Kint realizes that everything in his story is on bits of paper around his office and in fact none of it was true. As Kint walks away from the police station, his limp is gone and he jumps into a car and is gone forever.

Source: TheRichest

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